"Spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." Isaiah 58:10
How many years have you been a Christian? If you are reading this blog, you are probably someone who has been richly blessed and who has been "saved" by the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Praise God for His blessings in our lives!
In the years since you have been a Christian, how has God's grace changed you? How have you become new? Perhaps your answer to that question is that you are in the "good person" camp. You are a good provider for your family, you love and honor your parents, you do your best to avoid sin and repent when you make a mistake. You try to be a good example at work and at your kids' sporting events. When someone is sick, you take them a casserole and a cake, and you pray most days. You try to remember people's birthdays, and you pay your taxes on time. You take your family to church every Sunday morning, and even sometimes on Sunday and Wednesday nights. At Christmas time, you donate to a local charity, and you may even adopt an angel to help a child have a nice holiday.
All these things are good--they are important, and they are wonderful. But do you ever find yourself asking the difficult but all too important question--when I stand before my maker on Judgement Day, what will He say? Have I done all I can to be His disciple? Have I spent my life serving Him each day, sharing His love not just with my friends and family, but with complete strangers who need Him, too?
I ask myself these questions a lot. I know that I will never deserve God's grace, and this conversation is not about "Works vs. Grace."
It is about ME--have I been so transformed and consumed by Jesus that I am "spent" each night because I have been "pouring myself out" as an offering to glorify Him in a fallen world?
I have been a Christian for over 20 years. In those years, I have gone to college, gotten married to a wonderful man, buried my father, given birth to 3 precious children, built a house and a career, but I can't quote a statistic on how many souls, if any, I have played a part in bringing to Jesus. Sure, I haven't strayed from the "good person" camp, and I hope most of my friends and family would say that I am more of a blessing than a burden in their lives, but have I really used these 20 years of Christian life LIVING for Jesus?
I can't do anything about the past, but I can make myself "new" now. I want to live my next 20 years "spending myself" in His service. I want to get out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to share the Gospel. That commitment is the reason I joined the Mission Athens team and the reason I am writing this blog. God has been so good to me, and I want to share Him with the world. I want as many people as possible, as many people as I can touch, to share in His grace.
A few weeks ago, a very kind man challenged the Mission Athens team with this question, "Are we so busy GOING to church that we have forgotten to BE the church?"
What a fantastic challenge! Mission Athens is dedicated to "being the church" in our community. We are not perfect, and we don't always get it right, but we are trying. Each week, we reach out to the hurting in our community and try to bless them in some way. Sometimes our projects are big, and sometimes they are small, but all of them are designed to share Jesus with our neighbors.
The purpose of this blog is to share our thoughts, the lessons we are learning, and to provide a place where we can list any needs, prayer requests, or ways you can help us in our mission to share the love of Jesus as we serve the world. Thank you for reading our blog and for supporting the work of the Mission Athens team.
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